As your garden greenery makes that summer shift from abundant to unruly, make the problem the solution with an on-the-spot mulch.
I’d had enough. After time away (planned and unplanned), a first heatwave that forced plants to grow like billy-o, being poorly – vertigo and spring-into-summer gardening do not mix – and then a second and a third heatwave (I’m losing count), I was done.
My first garden terrace was so overgrown, so utterly verdant, so out of control, and so reminiscent of invading triffids that I caved and – despite the heat – chopped the whole lot down. It was a huge if bittersweet relief to fell everything – even the plants I’d rather have kept; they’d become swamped by rebellious wild raspberries, nettles and bracken, which in recent years have acquired super-charged growing powers.
Temperatures of 30°C-plus soon had the felled greenery wilted and flat, but I needed to mulch the whole area to set my mind at rest – I don’t want an unruly rerun when it eventually rains. This terrace has been dogged by my dithering for a while: will it be for food or flowers, for perennials, for annuals for cutting, for pollinators… ? Ultimately, it became a bit of everything, and none of it quite worked. Forlorn neglect finally summoned the hand scythe. I then needed mulch, lots of mulch – at the height of another sapping heatwave.
I carved out the slate-walled terraces here from a bracken-riddled bank. It was hard, methodical work, and because I was loosening and levelling the ground, I was able to remove the thick, tough bracken rhizomes as I went along, mixing them into steaming hot compost heaps, which I then fed back to the soil.
Bracken still surrounds the garden, its opportunist rhizomes occasionally venturing into the cultivated areas, which I deal with by constantly pulling up the fronds. Severing the fronds from the rhizome by pulling (wearing tough gloves and minding your back) is one of the most effective ways of weakening Pteridium aquilinum and slowing its spread.
In spring, trampling down the sappy unfurling fronds, or mowing them off with a scythe, also helps, but eventually other jobs beckon and big, mature fronds form. I can cut these using secateurs or a scythe, but pulling is the most effective bracken-suppressor, especially if you can do a pull at least twice in summer. You’ll never eliminate it completely, which isn’t such a bad thing. I didn’t have the energy to drive to the village’s communal take-what-you-need woodchip mulch pile, but my permaculture mind reminded me that the problem is the solution – so I went on the pull.
Bracken is tough at this time of year, but pulling up fronds as tall as I am is relatively easy. They’re big and awkward to deploy whole as mulch, so I chopped them up (gloves again), using my nifty hand scythe, into a big collecting bag. After a few hours I’d gathered enough mulch to cover the terrace (including bare soil where I’d recently excavated some ghastly plastic ‘weed control’ fabric) in a layer around 7cm deep; I just dropped big handfuls and spread it out.
An advantage of bracken used this way is that it lays down flat, the shredded, overlapping fronds effectively covering what’s beneath it with a light-blocking blanket (much as it does naturally, its dead fronds forming a suppressing blanket). It looked and smelt divine and filled me with calm. A week later it was sun-browned and crisp.
But going on the pull – which didn’t have me sweating too much and is satisfyingly addictive – did more than just set my mind at ease.
I cleared fronds from a large area of the banks surrounding the garden, weakening it in the process. This will give wild flowers more chance to prosper, and means there will be fewer dead, brown and dry fronds next spring – something all gardeners growing next to open countryside need to think about as the climate changes and the resulting risk of wildfires intensifies (swathes of upland North Wales are burning as I write).
As my ‘emergency’ mulch gradually decays into the soil, it’ll enrich it; bracken is rich in plant nutrients, especially potash, and trace elements, and slowly decays into a dark, fibrous humus. The thick, tough stalks will be the last to go (by then, decision will hopefully have replaced dither). It’s little wonder that bracken is a key component of peat-free Dalefoot Composts; their Lakeland Gold is made entirely from composted bracken and can be used to break up clay and heavy soils, and as an all-round soil improver (I mix it with leaf mould for potting up).
My bracken pull has weakened a ‘weed’, lessened a minor fire hazard, given long unused muscles a workout, turned an unruly terrace into a blank canvas, improved the soil, shaded the greenhouse (I laid some non-chopped fronds on the roof) and given me serenity. The wild life is loving it, too: slow worms are sliding below the now dry, crisp fronds, while hunting spiders race across them. Brilliant bracken has saved my plant-based bacon. It’ll produce more useful, nutrient-rich, only-a-few-paces-away fronds next summer, making it the ultimate renewable, pull-chop-drop mulch.
Since then, I’ve been doing less pulling and more chopping and dropping. Comfrey chops down beautifully into a hairy, leafy, soil-feeding mulch that I’ve used around my drought-flagging dahlias, and makes an effective evaporation-stopping pot-top mulch for flagging containers.
Some plants staged a comeback through the terrace mulch. These were swiftly felled with the scythe, before being covered with a thick top-up mulch of soft and sappy scythe-chopped willow shoots (pruned serendipitously from under the telephone wire), overhanging hazel and stems of not-yet-seeding rosebay willowherb.
Almost any soft, leafy plants make good summer chop and drop mulch, including non-thorny hedge trimmings. They’re a relatively easy mulching win when it’s hot, and will work all around the garden, especially as a short-term, pop-on mulch on bare, exposed soil where you have harvested crops such as new potatoes. They’ll keep the soil moist, prevent a flush of weed seedlings, and can quickly be moved on when the ground’s needed. Save any woody bits that won’t chop for shredding and composting later on.
Out on the terraced bed, all is calm – myself included – and future plans are forming. The mulch is dry and crisp after weeks without rain, a landing ground for basking red admirals. Voles scurry unseen beneath the soil-feeding fronds. Frogs hunt on cool, dewy evenings. Marauding raspberries and nettles are held at bay.
Mulches can’t ever be too thick, can they? Another fresh layer won’t do any harm. There’s heaps more bracken around the garden… and it won’t take long. I’m going back on the pull.
Words and images © John Walker
Find John on X @earthFgardener